The present invention relates to apparatus for reproducing electrically recorded still picture information without using any silver salt recording medium, and more particularly the invention relates to a reproducing apparatus whereby a plurality of separately taken still pictures are superimposed and reproduced as a single picture and then displayed as a multiple-shot picture on the ordinary television receiver.
Generally, the multiple exposure technique is well known in the field of silver salt photography, etc., in which a plurality of different pictures are exposed on the same photosensitive surface, and by suitably adjusting the exposure times for taking these pictures, it is possible to obtain a multi-exposure picture.
This type of technique is not limited to the silver salt photography and it is also applicable to electronic picture recording and reproducing apparatus for recording and reproducing still picture signals from a variety of recording mediums including magnetic recording mediums such as a magnetic sheet, magnetic disc and magnetic drum and various other recording mediums such as a semiconductor RAM (random access memory), bubble memory, DRAW (direct read after write) memory and photomagnetic memory. Thus, by incorporating a 1-field or 1-frame memory in an electronic camera in correspondence to one picture so that the first photographed picture is stored in the memory and the first photographed picture is read from the memory upon initiation of the second photographing, it is possible to suitably combine the pictures together, record on a magnetic sheet or the like and reproduce to produce an electronic photograph having the similar effect as the multiple exposure in the silver salt photography. Where pictures are taken by means of a solid-state imaging device or the like, however, if the magnitude of a signal corresponding to each picture element is stored in analog quantity, a very great number of analog memories will be required for storing the whole information of one field or frame and this is substantilly the same even if the analog quantity is subjected to analog-digital conversion and then processed digitally. Thus, the required capacity of the 1-field or 1-frame memory is very great, making the use of this technique with portable electronic cameras, etc., impractical.